Stolen Away (23 page)

No ribbon.

“Let’s try the van,” I suggested. It was in the back corner, where the overhead lights flickered annoyingly. It was an extended VW van, the original lime green since painted over in blue. In the back, the single shelf was empty except for a few candles and a box of matches. The bed was made, but also empty. We found a box under the driver’s seat, and I got excited until we opened it and found only photographs and an old diary, the pages yellowed.

“Nothing.” I pulled the door shut and leaned against it, defeated. “I was so sure it would be here.”

Lucas ran a hand through his hair, equally frustrated. “Samhain is in mere hours now.”

“I know.” There was a lump in my throat.

Meg pinched Lucas, hard. “You’re not helping,” she chided him. To me she asked, “Did your aunt not have a home of her own?”

I shook my head. “Not as long as I’ve been alive.”

Meg tapped her lips, thinking. “It would be in a place where she could get to it with some ease, if necessary.”

I thought so hard I nearly went cross-eyed.

“She doesn’t even have a bank account, never mind a safety-deposit box. I always thought it was just because she didn’t trust the government or something. When I was ten, I decided she was on the run from the police.” I thought harder. “In the movies, it’s always in a locker at the bus depot.” Lucas waited patiently, his hair the color of antique wood. Something clicked, slowly. “That’s it,” I whispered. I bounced on my heels. “The old hope chest. Come on.”

We hurried up to the apartment. “Mom’ll be at work.”

We crept inside. Meg was still as a deer in the woods. I was glad for the area rugs, which muffled the sound of our footsteps. The living room was stuffy, windows locked tight. The sun was fully out now, burning the barren field of sky.

The hope chest, of course, was locked.

And I’d been looking for the keys for years, with no success. We didn’t have time for a repeat search. “We’ll need to pick the lock,” I whispered.

Meg smiled. “Let me,” she murmured, soft as breath. Even Elvis didn’t move from where he was curled up on the couch. She pulled a long straight pin out of her leather satchel. It didn’t take her very long at all, a few jiggles, a soft snick, and it was done. I took the candles and the bowl of jelly beans off the top and lifted the lid. Lucas muffled the creak of the hinges with his hands.

The hope chest held jars of rowan berries, dried ivy vines, iron nails, and, in the center, a small pouch. It was soft velvet, like the ones you got at jewelry stores, and it was bound with red thread.

Inside, the velvet handfasting ribbon.

“They should be here by now.”

I was pacing in the field by the pond, where I could keep an eye on the hidden entrance while we waited for Eloise and Lucas. Isadora was perched on a tree branch making hand signals to the Fae hidden in the pines on the opposite side of the water. The sun was sinking behind the park, leaving a thick humidity that made it feel as if we were wearing woolen coats.

“Something’s happened,” I insisted, pacing faster. “Something’s wrong. Oh my God, they ate her liver.”

“Ew.” Isadora grimaced. “We eat berries, you nutter, not human organs.”

“Jo, if you don’t chill out, I’m going to poke you with an elf dart.” Devin waggled a handful at me to prove his point.

I slowed my pacing but I didn’t stop altogether. I rubbed my arms, chilled despite the heat. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Of course I am. But she’ll be here.” He went back to opening and closing his pocket knife. His nervous tic was just as irritating as mine.

“Will you both calm down?” Isadora snapped. “Honestly, amateurs.”

The sun sank lower and lower. Twilight rose like smoke, suddenly, maliciously. I could hear Eldric’s warnings echoing in my ears.

“There,” Devon said just as Eloise came racing between the willows, with Lucas and a girl I didn’t know. Eloise’s face was red, excited.

I hugged her hard. “You’re late.”

She hugged me back. “Sorry.” She introduced us. “This is Meg.”

We smiled at each other. “Well?” I asked. “Did you get help?” She nodded, breathless. “Brill,” I said. “I knew you would.”

“You?”

“Isadora’s lot will protect the pond. Because apparently come Halloween night, this park is just crawling with beasties.”

“Great,” she said drily. “The courts will meet us in there. They can’t take Strahan on personally though. That’s up to us.”

Meg shivered suddenly. She was graceful as a doe.
“Samhain’s unfurling,” she said quietly. “We’d best get going, before we’re caught out.”

“Strahan will have patrols,” Lucas agreed. His eyes glittered suddenly. “Down!”

We dropped into the tall grass like we were marionettes whose strings had suddenly been cut. There was a rock digging into my hip. Devin was behind Eloise, his hand on her calf. Lucas had swung himself up into an oak tree.

A woman wearing hard, shiny leather, like a beetle’s shell, emerged from a circle of mushrooms. She was armed to the teeth with wickedly curved swords. Beetles crawled over the grass, dust clinging to their pincers. Beetles didn’t usually bother me; they were kind of pretty, actually, the way the last of the light caught them in swirls of iridescent blues and greens.

Except when there were hundreds of them.

I had to bite my tongue when one of them walked over my thumb. Did Fae beetles attack? Were they poisonous? If that one got any closer to my face, I was going to bite my tongue clean off.

She walked slowly, confidently, barely looking around. She had no reason to believe we’d be here by the pond. But she was close enough that I couldn’t cry out, not even when a beetle got tangled in my hair. Another one followed, falling into the collar of my shirt. I swallowed a scream.

When she’d finally gone and Isadora and Lucas gave the signal to come out of hiding, I leaped to my feet and
shuddered about like a lunatic. I shook my hair out, and my shirt, moaning. “I did
not
like that.”

“If you’re done dancing,” Isadora said drily. “Let’s go, before any of the others come. They have to pass by the pond to get to the ring.”

The swan was making its rounds on the pond. The last of the lilies sweetened the still air. “Could be a sentry,” Meg said. “Strahan’s from Swan folk, after all, before Talia exiled him.”

“I got it,” Lucas said, dropping out of the tree and turning into a hawk. His huge wings flapped by my face. It was so unexpected that I tumbled backward and landed on my butt.

“You do that a lot.” Isadora shook her head at me.

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered, gathering up the wounded bits of my dignity. Lucas circled the pond, then dive-bombed. The swan honked, insulted. Lucas pecked again, going for its eyes. The swan eventually flew off, honking madly. Lucas waited for us on the banks, shimmering back into a medieval prince.

“Just a bird.” He shrugged.

I gaped at him. “Warn a body, would you, birdbrain?”

Eloise grinned at me. “Just wait.”

I groaned. “It makes me nervous when you’re that cheerful.”

“Please, you’re the troublemaker. I’m the quiet, polite one.”

I snorted so hard I sounded like a dyspeptic pig. “Right.”

“You’re both brats,” Devin said soothingly. “Now, move it.”

Isadora made a last signal to her brethren, who gleamed briefly like fireflies in response. She floated over the middle of the pond and dropped like a stone. Ripples made concentric circles. She popped back up briefly. “Will you come on? You’ve got to swim to get to the door, don’t you?”

“This is such a bad idea,” I muttered as Meg dove in, then Devin.

Lucas waited for me, keeping guard. “Go on,” he urged.

I walked into the warm water, feeling a little too much like Ophelia for my liking. My skirt twisted heavily around my legs. I took a deep breath and went under, struggling to open my eyes. Everything went gray-green and hazy. We swam down toward the bottom, batting weeds out of the way. I followed Devin’s wildly kicking feet.

Until he stopped kicking.

I couldn’t tell what was going on, only that he’d stopped swimming and had decided to float instead. Water filled his clothes so that he swayed gently. I swam closer and tugged on his sleeve. My lungs were already starting to protest the lack of air. He ignored me.

I tugged harder.

He was too busy staring at the watery shadow of a girl under the water. Her hair was long and pale. She was innocently naked; her long hair glistened like opals. She beckoned at Devin. He followed.

Isadora flew past my nose, startling me. She pointed up and then burst through the surface of the pond. I followed, gasping for breath.

“That’s a kelpie,” Isadora snapped. “She’ll kill him.” She slapped her small hand on my forehead. “See for yourself.”

I dove back down, searching for Devin. The hauntingly beautiful girl wasn’t a girl at all. She wasn’t even a mermaid.

She was a horse.

A big, black, angry horse was drowning Devin because he couldn’t be bothered to fight back. I kicked forward frantically, just as Lucas shot past me. He swung his sword at the kelpie. She nearly clamped her teeth over his arm, eyes rolling.

Eloise went up for a breath, then came back down. We both descended on Devin, snarling at the kelpie. She tried to kick Eloise in the head. Lucas swam between them, and used the horse’s mane to leap onto her back. He yanked back until she snorted, blowing bubbles. Her seductive gaze broke away from Devin.

He blinked, shook his head. Eloise and I took an arm each and dragged him up to the surface. He coughed out water, trying to breathe.

“What the hell was that thing?” he finally gasped.

“Kelpie,” I answered.

“So, you get a Fae prince, El gets a hawk, and I get a psychotic water horse who tries to kill me? How is that fair?” He coughed again. “You guys haven’t even read Lord of the Rings,” he said again, disgusted. It was his traditional
complaint. His teeth chattered. Eloise and I looked at each and then closed in, each kissing a cheek. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “Let’s go.”

We dove back in, swimming down to where Lucas had chased off the kelpie. I saw the swish of her tail and had no idea where she could be swimming off to in such a small pond. As long as it was away from us, that was good enough for me.

Lucas led us through a dark crevice between two rocks and we emerged in a kind of cave with pink quartz glittering in the walls. We hauled ourselves up onto the rocky cave floor, drenched and gasping. My muscles quivered uselessly. I felt like melted butter.

I wrung out my hair like a rope and then twisted it into a halfhearted braid. The rocks led to a tunnel hung with cobwebs like lace.

“Everyone here?” Eloise whispered. We all murmured, “Here,” like it was homeroom.

“Iz, how far is it?” I asked, pushing the webs aside.

“A few minutes yet. We’re not even under the rath proper.”

Devin was right beside me, holding out his pocket knife like it was a broadsword and he was a warrior out of one of his fantasy novels. I didn’t even tease him about it. A rat chittered at us, dodging our feet. Isadora flitted backward toward us, watched the rat shoot down the hall with hard eyes.

“That one was a sentry. We have to hurry or we’ll lose the element of surprise.”

We broke into a run with no more prodding necessary. There were faint sounds of merrymaking: laughter, some kind of musical instrument being played, footsteps overhead. We went up rough steps carved into the earth, the walls and ceiling turning into a complicated weave of tree roots and little yellow flowers. Isadora looked right fierce.

“Iz, you all right?”

She nodded, showing her teeth and a hungry smile. “I’m looking forward to this.”

I was a little worried for her. She might have been some warrior queen over a hundred years ago, but right now she was tiny. And her sword, though sharpened, was even tinier.

The tunnel curved left and brought us to a tarnished silver grate. Lucas shifted to a hawk again and caught the rat in his beak before it could dart through. Lucas tossed the rat and it squeaked, hit the wall, and then lay still. No one said anything. We peered through the grate.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful before, not even Eldric’s room. The ceiling was all silver roots dripping red roses and painted glass lanterns. The floors were thickly laid with Persian rugs; the furniture was ornate and hand carved, piled high with silk cushions. Jeweled oil lamps burned next to thick beeswax candles, and there was a fire crackling and snapping inside a massive hearth. The mantel was crowded with more candles, slim tapers of every height and thick pillars carved with roses. Incense hovered and snaked through the hall. A shield bearing a white swan hung
on the far wall. Huge tables were covered with every kind of food imaginable: pomegranates, brioche, éclairs, blood oranges, fried zucchini flowers, pink meringues. No wonder Eloise had had such a hard time resisting. My mouth was already watering.

But it all paled next to the Fae in their finest corsets and frock coats, cravats and jewels. A slim blond man with splintered antlers played the harp, his feet chained to the wall. The song was so sad, there were tears on my cheeks.

“Nicodemus,” Eloise whispered.

A chained mermaid lounged in a water fountain, her expression both hot and disgruntled. Strahan’s guests were dancing and laughing, wings unfurled. Guards with crow feathers on their breastplates surveyed them from every door. I looked for Eldric but the music was so distracting, I found myself swaying, eyes half-closed. My feet itched to join the festivities. I could stand here in the damp, forever, just listening and twirling.

Something sharp poked me in the neck.

“Ow!”

Isadora glared at me, her sword aimed at the same sore spot. “Fae music,” she explained. “It bewitches humans.” Eloise’s eyes were closed and even Devin looked like he was about to break into a jig. Isadora poked them both. “Don’t focus on the song,” she demanded.

It was surprisingly difficult. In fact, it took such an effort that sweat dripped down the side of my face. Lucas-as-hawk landed on Eloise’s shoulder, dug in his claws.